EarlyLook

If you're a fan of How I Met Your Mother -- and if you're reading this, you likely are -- the video preview of Monday's episode probably got you pretty excited. After all, it's Neil Patrick Harris and the cast, singing and dancing about Barney Stinson's love of suits. What's not to like, right? If you were wondering, though, how the rest of the episode was, I'm here to tell you that it's the best episode of the season, and maybe the best episode we've seen in a couple of years.

Come with me after the jump and I'll explain. No worries; there won't be any spoilers in this post.

This Sunday night, Chuck returns to NBC for a special two-episode, two hour jump start into season three. Expect to be dazzled. NBC was good enough to send an impressive press kit for Chuck's new season, including five episodes.

For those of you who were concerned about how the show would handle the many changes promulgated by the end of last season, you can relax. While it's no spoiler to reveal that Chuck now has the fully integrated Intersect 2.0 inside his head, complete with martial arts skills and other talents (Flamenco guitar?) it's also not a surprise that having all that in his brain doesn't mean that life is any easier for a simple, Burbank IT guy.

British female comedy impressionists like Catherine Tate should pay royalties to Tracey Ullman for copying her schtick. Ullman was the original and still remains one of the best, if not THE best, at what she does.

As with the first two seasons of her Showtime series Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, she pretends to be, or rather becomes, different personalities across the United States over a single day with an ubiquitous announcer informing us of who she is and where in the country she is located. She even impersonates various celebrities on the way, and sometimes she is more than one of them at the same time.

If you ever watched Everybody Loves Raymond -- or currently watch the reruns -- you might wonder what would Raymond become after a while. What would happen if he didn't have Deborah yelling at him and his family keeping him from being a self-indulgent slob who only thought of himself. Men of a Certain Age shows you the dark side of Raymond, only here Ray Romano is called Joe. Joe and his college buddies, Owen and Terry, are on the wrong side of 40 and they know it.

Jesse Ventura has been a professional wrestler, an actor and a politician. None of these things have been as fake as the reality television show he will be hosting on truTV titled Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura (premiering December 2 at 10 PM ET).

For the record, I have never met or spoken to Jesse Ventura. He would corroborate this if anybody asked. As a result, I have no idea if he actually believes the crap he says or the conspiracies he investigates on this show. From what I've read, it wouldn't surprise me.

In the series premiere, Jesse and his crew of unknowns, consisting of two young white guys and the token black British female, are investigating a U.S. government installation built in Alaska that's possibly intended to control the weather. Who makes this stuff up? Now we know where the monies saved from stopping the "bridge to nowhere" went.

When word broke that the Stargate franchise was moving into darker territory with Stargate Universe, fan reaction ranged from cautiously optimistic to downright angry. The anger mostly came from fans who felt jilted by Syfy's sudden cancellation of the veteran show Stargate Atlantis (it didn't help that Syfy announced the new series in a press release shortly after announcing the cancellation of Atlantis). To some, it seemed like the fan favorite (Atlantis) had to die so the edgy new experiment (Universe) could live.

Universe –- a fine, scrappy show packed with great actors – might now be facing an uphill battle with some of its target audience members. Stargate fans unwilling to give the show a chance should know one thing: The franchise's spirit of adventure remains intact in the first three episodes of Universe. It is different and darker than Stargate: SG-1 and Atlantis – even blatantly dreary at times – but it's still Stargate.

Certain shows seem to be perfect for certain television networks. That's the point of programming, no doubt, and Lifetime has done a good job filling their female-centric niche with TV movies and series like Army Wives. That said, I think there will soon be a new favorite on Lifetime and it's called Drop Dead Diva. It's chick-flick, rom-com for weekly TV viewers, and while men might enjoy the whimsical plot and attractive characters, this is a show that ladies will adore.

If you were talking high concept like a Hollywood pitchman, you could describe Drop Dead Diva as Ally McBeal for the Lane Bryant set. Or maybe it's Sara Lee meets Heaven Can Wait. However, you put it, Drop Dead Diva is a switcheroo story about a vapid, but lovable, gorgeous size 2 model who dies at the exact same time as a brilliant, generous size 16 workaholic attorney, and in one of those wonderful Hollywood comedy devices, shallow Deb's spirit winds up in good Jane's body.

I really wanted to love Warehouse 13. It's a fun show with two compelling leads, an adventurous spirit, and just enough subversive stuff seemingly bubbling beneath its surface. But the two-hour pilot, airing tonight on SyFy, only hints at the greatness we've seen from its creator's previous work. The premiere, scripted by Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and original writer Rockne S. O'Bannon (Farscape), begins with a strong quirky heartbeat, but a stale mystery plot quickly slows the pulse.

If you heard about Fox's new musical drama/comedy Glee and thought it's probably going to be something like Disney's High School Musical, you're wrong. Gleefully wrong. Glee is one of the best entertainments I've seen on television in a long, long time.

Writer/producer/director Ryan Murphy describes the show as a hybrid, and he's right. It is. For me, I saw elements of the movie Election, plus Fame and Friday Night Lights, with a bit of The Wonder Years thrown in, only it's not nostalgia. Glee is all the best parts of all the above, plus music and dancing and great characters and really witty material.

Southland, the gritty new police drama from film producer Ann Biderman, puts the spotlight on the dark and grimy corners of Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of uniformed cops and plainclothes detectives. Unfortunately, the series premiere is mired in cop show clichés and forgets to deliver anything we haven't seen before.

The first episode – stream it now or watch it below, a week before it debuts on NBC – owes a lot to NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street and countless other cop shows that came before it. It's a procedural with a large cast about cops struggling to balance "the job" with their personal lives.

I'm trying to decide on my feelings about Aliens in America, the new comedy premiering Monday at 8:30 on the The CW. When I first reviewed the show back in June as part of a preview of The CW's new shows, I said that it actually had some potential However, after reviewing the re-shot pilot and the episode following it, I'm not too sure anymore. Oh, as a coming-of-age comedy about a boy just trying to make it through high school it has its moments. But, there are just some elements to the show that leave me uneasy. More about that uneasiness later in the review. For now, let me talk about the premise of the show, which you can see after the jump.

Okay, here are the similarities between Mick St. John, the vampire private detective of the new CBS drama Moonlight, and Angel, the vampire private detective of Angel: both are vampires (which I said already), both live in Los Angeles, both need blood to survive, both drive classic convertibles (which, being unable to use during the day, boggles my mind), both have long coats that flap in the wind while they stand on rooftops, and they are both fighting for the innocent person.

Here are the differences: the show that Angel was in was so much better than the show that Mick St. John is in. That, and Mick sleeps in a freezer instead of a bed.

I know, I know, all of you Boneheads (and I mean that in the most affectionate way) want some answers after last season's finale. Did Jack and Angela stay together? Did Zack really go to Iraq? Is Bones' father still in jail? What did Bones mean when she said 'What do we do now?' while standing at the altar with Booth? Did Buffy leave Sunnydale to pursue Angel in Washington D.C.?